Today’s Polls, 5/22

It’s Quinnipiac Day here at FiveThirtyEight.com and once again, Quinnipiac‘s swing state polls contain good news for Hillary Clinton. She holds leads of 7 points over John McCain in both Ohio and Florida, and 13 points in Pennsylvania. In the cases of Pennsylvania and Florida, this represents an incremental improvement for Clinton from Quinnipiac’s previous set of polls and in Ohio an incremental downgrade (but still a good result compared with other polls of the state). Clinton holds a lead over McCain in our inferred popular vote metric for the first time since we began tracking these numbers, and is inching toward a 60 percent win percentage overall.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, leads McCain by 6 in Pennsylvania but trails him by 4 in each of Florida and Ohio. Across the board, these are slightly worse results than Quinnipiac’s most recent numbers for Obama. However, his win percentage is only really harmed in Ohio, because that’s the case in which the number came in below his polling averages as well as being worse than in Quinnipiac’s previous survey. (Since we do not completely throw out “old” polls from the same agency but do decrease their weighting when fresher data becomes available, the extent to which a candidate’s averages move on new polling data is determined by some combination of those two things: how the result compares to the pollster’s previous polls and how they compare to the results of other pollsters).

The other polling out this morning is in California, where PPIC shows a 17-point lead for Barack Obama and a 12-point lead for Hillary Clinton. For Obama, this is his strongest showing in California since February, whereas for Clinton it amends PPIC’s previous poll that showed her California margin at a surprisingly close 3 points.

We’re up with the polling thread a little earlier than usual and may run a second update if there is sufficient polling volume later in the day.

Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight. @natesilver538